Using a Fraction of the Functionality is Bad?
Via Mike Gunderloy's Daily Grind, I was reading about Office 12 possibly making some of its interface elements even more task contextual. The old people-don't-use-even-a-fraction-of-Office's-functionality chestnut reared its head.
And what's the point of upgrading to the next Office if you don't
even use a fraction of your current Office 2003 or Office XP or Office
2000? Clearly, Microsoft needs to solve that conundrum.
I've heard this dozens of times before, but upon further
review it really just seems like a silly pretext and one that I lot of
people seem to consider self-evident.
Sure I like modular software, and, yes, I like applications that
align directly with my needs. Smallish task-dedicated applications have an amazingly successful track record.
Word, however, is a broad mass-market
application that has to be all things to all people. If I never use
Word's Table of Authorities functionality, does it minimize my
experience that it's been included so that lawyers can make use of it?
I rarely do footnotes, but how is it a negative that I could do any
myriad number of things with them if I needed to?
The wrong-headed conclusion that typically is inferred from the 10%-of-functionality argument is that Word is so hard to
use no human really knows how to use much of it. In reality, it's an incredibly broad
application that can perform a ridiculously extensive number of tasks
across the majority of the planet's document authoring needs.
People don't individually use a large percentage of Word's
functionality because the set of tasks that people as a whole perform while
creating documents is enormously diverse.
The flawed conclusion that Office applications are bloated
because they have functionality for the masses is frequently cited in
articles questioning the merits of upgrading. The equally specious
conclusion is that there is no need for Office innovation and
improvements--there is nothing left to add to today's mainstream office
applications.
I disagree. I don't see how making existing broad
functionality even more usable isn't compelling. Outlook 2003 added new
features and improved existing usability. Frankly, it was personally very compelling. If Word and
Excel can be shepherded in similar directions, that would be significant and
possibly worth the incremental costs.
Ultimately this argument about percentage of feature use is
oft-cited but it really doesn't reveal much of anything at all. Would I rather use a
significantly less usable office suite with a feature set that included every feature I regularly use but not one more?
If this was Scandinavian furniture you might get me to bite on that.
In any event, the feature set specifically mentioned in
the article sounds like Personalized Menus which I typically turn off
immediately. So it's not a good direction per se, but the Outlook 2003
reference may mean it's just not well defined yet or lost in
communication.